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Calls On Better Citizenship Of Eastern Shore To Take Action Expressing Their Horror Of Salisbury Lynching
To the Editor of The Sun—Sir; It was, I think, Edmund Burke who said "You cannot indict a whole people." And this truism should be kept in mind when judging the people of our Eastern Shore, and even those of Salisbury, in connection with the atrocious lynching which has occurred there and which has smirched the escutcheon and wounded the pride of our splendid State.
AH of us know that, speaking largely, there is no finer class of people anywhere than exists on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. No need to enumerate names, nor adduce proof of any kind, to support this statement, for it is long since an established fact. Nor is any proof needed that these fine, upstanding people join with that baser element in upholding the sadistic orgy at Salisbury as a mere "demonstration." In common with decency everywhere, they regard it as a shuddering horror, a nightmare of degenerate blood lust. To them it bears no other aspect. Crediting them (as we must) with this feeling, we wait for them to take action which shall be expressive of this, the real sentiment of the best people of the Shore. It is intolerable that the whole people of the section—of the entire State, in fact—shall rest under the stigma of lawlessness.
As time elapses the need for organized protesting action grows more and more urgent. The finger of scorn is being pointed at Maryland, and that scorn is well merited. All that can be done about it is to prove that the indictment of a whole people is unjust. It is natural that the inhabitants of Salisbury should seek to shield their relatives and friends from exposure as participants in the
cannibal orgy which has shocked the world; though even ^Salisbury may have its Lot. Yet the Eastern Shore is not Salisbury. and the descendants of the Lloyds, the Tilghmans, the Dennises, the Beauchampses, the Lpnkfords, the Golds-boroughs, the Henrys, the Wrights and a host of others, great in every emergency of state and nation, must in sheer self-defense take drastic action to make it apparent that they do not condone crime, nor shelter criminals from just punishment; that murder is murder whether perpetrated by a half-wittec Negro boy or by a mob of lawless white men. Wm. Woodward Baldwin.
Baltimore, Dec. 28, 1931.
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